With Practice
by Aria Illusine
Summary: Non-Mass ItaSaku, "Stay." Then, "Watch." No full-fledged shinobi had ever let her just watch them practice in plain sight, or instructed her to do so. Snapshots over time; training, growth, and shuriken. COMPLETE!
1. Fortuitous

I know it's been such a long time since my last update! Sorryyyyy! I've been super busy with school (and will only get busier). So when a little fic jumped into my head, I forced myself to finish writing it, even though I really should have been asleep over an hour ago...whatever XD. Hopefully this'll tide you guys over until later when I can pick up Hiwaya, Belonging, To Myself, Imperial, and the Shatter series...and all those oneshots...and...gah. Yes uh...so, enjoy!

Disclaimer: As always, I do not own Naruto, nor am I deriving any sort of profit (monetary) off of this series. Reviews are emotional profit, but I doubt that has any bearing legally...

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**With Practice**

**Chapter 1: Fortuitous**

"Forehead! Forehead!"

The chant burning in her ears, the rose-headed little girl flung herself over the low wall that divided the practice yard from the forests skirting the village, heedless to pain as tall grass sliced her bare legs open when she sprinted away. The mocking laughter of the other children followed her like an unwanted ghost as she made her getaway. Tears streamed down her childishly round cheeks as a sob forced its way past her lips, she was beyond caring though. All she wanted was distance between herself and her tormentors.

Blinded by her tears, she didn't see the kunai pouch until after the ground came up to give her a hard kiss, knocking the breath from her lungs and rattling her brain so that she just lay there dazed as she gasped for air.

Dry grass scratched her cheek as her small fingers clenched the dirt and her breaths shuddered and coughed and mewled in pain. Her tear-glazed eyes focused uncomprehendingly on the kunai pouch that had caused her to hurl headlong into the ground.

It wasn't until a pair of dark, regulation boots appeared in her line of vision that she realized she had intruded on someone's training. Lifting her glass-green eyes to the owner of said boots, the full weight of her actions crashed down on her; the obsidian gaze that stared back was utterly familiar to her, even though she didn't know the preteen personally.

Uchiha.

That pale, taciturn demeanor and the dark, shuttered eyes that seemed to see everything and reveal nothing; whoever he was, she knew he was Uchiha, clan of clans among the Konoha shinobi.

The little girl clamped her lips shut to hold in sobs, swallowing a hiccup and turning her already red face completely crimson with her efforts. She aspired to be a kunoichi one day, and being seen in front of one of the qualified, _hitai-ate wearing_, members of a high-ranking ninja clan while she cried was more shame than her little heart could have withstood. So she forced herself not to make a noise as she mastered her emotions and surreptitiously tried to scrub the salt from her cheeks.

For his part, the older boy seemed unconcerned, sparing her hardly a second glance as he retrieved his kunai pouch, checked to make sure nothing in it was damaged, and returned to his target practice.

The girl, sitting up gingerly to ease the pain on her aching ribs, watched in awe as he sent kunai after kunai into the trunk of a dead tree that was already pitted with many welts from previous sessions. When he sauntered to the tree to retrieve his kunai, with surprising grace for a boy who could have only been eleven or twelve at the most and in that period where most would have still had lingering traces of awkward puppyish-ness in their actions, to tug the deeply embedded blades from the wood, it was like a spell being broken. The rose-head shook herself mentally and carefully, quietly, attempted to slink away. She knew that, while the boy would probably notice her departure, he probably wouldn't care to stop her.

She was wrong.

Before she could take two steps, a sharpened kunai whistled through the air and thunked into the tree beside her.

She froze.

But when she turned to glance at the boy, he was calmly putting his kunai away and flicking shuriken through his fingers instead. Puzzled, and her childish curiosity piqued, she took another step forward.

And again, a shinobi weapon, this time a shuriken, thunked into the tree at her side. A clear warning.

So she wouldn't be allowed to leave unless she wanted to get hurt. But he wouldn't hurt her if she stayed. A small frown wrinkled between her young brows. Why was he doing this?

A question bubbled to her lips as she swiped a hand across eyes that were done streaming now that something else had caught her attention. '_What do you want? _ _Why are you doing this? Why aren't you letting me leave? Why, why, why?_' As if feeling her strangely intense gaze, the dark-haired turned with a sharp eyes.

"Stay."

A small nose wrinkled in surprise at the curt order, in a tone she would have bridled at from anyone save her parents.

Then, "Watch."

Surprise widened her eyes. A true shinobi, a real ninja of Konoha, was letting her, a little six-year-old girl, to watch as he practiced. Giving her permission, flat out ordering her to do it.

In all the time she had been yearning to become a shinobi herself, she had only been able to watch the older boys and girls practicing when she could get away from her parents and other children at school. And even then, she'd had to be careful not to be obvious, or give them any reason to chase her away. They had never let her just watch in plain sight, or instructed her to do so.

So she crept closer with care as she kept her eyes trained on the boy, noting the curve of his fingers as he went through drill after drill with sharp precision born of long practice. It wasn't until after he'd started running through his drills a second time that she noticed him performing them more slowly, the gestures a little more exaggerated. Realization flared in the pit of her stomach; he was showing her the moves needed for her to perform the drill herself. She didn't have any shuriken of her own, and wouldn't for years to come if her parents had any say in her purchases, but the movement of fingers and snap of the wrist was something she could mimic.

Her small, chubby digits imitated the older boy's clean lines, forming gestures that had none of his practiced ease, but all of a child's unthinking determination.

From the very corner of his eye, the boy watched, noting where she went awry and where she did well.

This was unusual for him; he wasn't the type to offer help – how many times had he put his younger brother, who was the same age as this pink-haired little thing if he was any judge, off when Sasuke begged him for training – but somehow he'd felt…compelled.

Maybe it had been his unusually light mood. He'd been promoted from genin to chuunin not too long ago, and today his father had looked at him with approval during the early morning spars that all young Uchiha shinobi participated in when home at the compound. Maybe it was the mission scroll inside his kunai pouch, the one that held details for his first B-ranked mission, to act as an escort. He had always enjoyed guard missions over the ones that required him to play on the offensive. Maybe it was just the prospect of onigiri for dinner, which his mother had promised him that morning.

For whatever reason, he found himself pausing in his routine and, before giving himself a chance to analyze the reasons behind his actions, strode to the girl at the other side of the clearing.

It was obvious that whatever had put the tear marks on her face made her wary; her face seemed unused to the suspicion and fear that chased each other across rounded features that would someday grow into the sharpness that adulthood brought. But she showed surprising courage as she stood her ground, watching him approach, though she dropped her hands to clasp them behind her back as soon as she noticed his intent.

"This way."

He thrust a hand under her nose, demonstrating the correct grip using a real, sharp shuriken, and then fixed her fingers when she mimicked him and curled her fingers in the double-knuckled pose he'd used.

"It feels strange," she muttered trying to force her hands into the right shape. As a six-year-old, she didn't have the same control over herself as he did.

'_And,_' he thought somewhat belatedly, '_She doesn't have the same pre-training you got._'

"Can…can I…"

Her words brought him back into the present, and he glanced down to find the girl's eyes darting from his face to the shuriken in his fingers with all the surreptitious longing that she couldn't hide.

"No."

His words obviously stung her; she drew back from him with a little jerk, as if the single syllable had become a needle that pricked her. The wrong reaction. He hadn't meant to hurt her feelings, only stop her from reaching for his shuriken. Sharp as they were, he didn't want her to take off a finger attempting to imitate him. Her movements were still too unpracticed to be handling actual weaponry just yet, though it was obvious by the way she watched his shuriken that her desire to be a shinobi would get her into weapons training at the Academy before too many years passed.

"I meant that you couldn't use these shuriken, not yet anyway," he said by way of explanation, a first; when did Uchiha ever explain themselves to anyone else who wasn't Uchiha? "But…"

The girl's ivy-hued eyes snapped from the sharp shards of metal in his hands to his face at the contemplative tone in his voice. She was surprised when his eyes flickered from her to the sky, and then back.

"It's getting late," he informed her, jolting her with the sudden change of topic that made her feel as if a door was being shut in her face. "I have a clan meeting I must attend, and perhaps your parents will be looking for you."

So he wanted to get rid of her.

Feeling upset by the sudden change in the older boy's demeanor, she tried not to let her emotions show as she took a step back and nodded. She shouldn't have expected the short time of watching and learning shuriken throwing to last; she was six, after all, and this boy was a full-fledged ninja. He probably had plenty of better things to do than indulge the desires of a little girl.

That didn't mean his sudden air of dismissal didn't hurt.

So it was with surprise that she met his even gaze when he followed up with, "Will you be able to come here tomorrow?"

She goggled, her tiny mind flooding with sudden pleasure at the possible prospect of another session of…whatever it was that had happened today. "Y-yes!"

"I have to leave on a mission, but be here tomorrow morning. I can give you shuriken you can practice with."

It wasn't until she was done gaping in awe when he suddenly disappeared from sight in a puff of smoke, a shinobi move she had only seen adults perform before, that she realized that she had no idea of his name. And he was already halfway home before he noticed that he had never asked her for hers.

But mystery and unknown names could hardly stop the little pinkette from spending the entire night practically squealing with glee every time she considered the possibility of practicing with actual shuriken; she had spent hours folding and refolding her hands into the proper shuriken hold until the stance felt comfortable, even as her fingers ached. She was tired by the time she made her way back to the clearing, having been unable to sleep for more than an hour at a time because she kept waking up to check her bedside clock to see how much longer she had to wait.

Her feet had wings as soon as her mother let her out to play the next morning, giving several people reason to wonder what had gotten into the short little rosy-haired girl that shot through the marketplace like a pink streak as she made a beeline for the forest grove, her heartbeat loud in her ears with nervous anticipation.

She was not disappointed.

There on the ground by the tree that was marred with two deep gashes, one from a kunai, the other from a shuriken – and how well she knew how they'd got there – was a small bag. With all the impatience of children her age, she fumbled with the knot and opened the bag, mindful that it _could_ hold sharp shuriken.

It didn't.

Instead, there were a dozen disks of wood in three shades, four pale birch disks, four of amber cherry wood, and four of darker oak, each with a perfect hole at the center and weighted with lead cores distributed around the disk, birch being the lightest while oak the heaviest. Three grades of shuriken weights to train her hands to them, in smooth, worn wood that wouldn't cut her. She marveled at how pretty they were, though she couldn't have known the skillful craftsmanship that had gone into their making. On one side of each of them were kanji, spelling out a name.

Uchiha _Itachi_.

She didn't actually know who he was, but, with lips moving as she sounded out the syllables he probably used to pronounce his name, she could guess that he was the one from yesterday. The one who had let her stay and watch him practice.

A little bubble of gratitude tickled her, a happy laugh falling from her lips as she fingered the gift with glee. The sandpapered wood felt sleek against her fingers, worn with the touch of another's hands before hers. Sending a birch practice-shuriken thudding against a nearby tree, she gave another laugh to the cool morning air.

"Thank you, Itachi-san!" she called, though she knew he probably couldn't hear her. "I never got to tell you my name, but I'm Sakura. Thank you for yesterday!"

High up in the tree canopy, Itachi watched as the girl set to imitating his drills from yesterday with cheery determination (and, admittedly, a sort of painful lack of grace that would hopefully be smoothed out with practice). He had skipped breakfast to get here early, taking instead a few of the onigiri his mother had made the night before as a morning meal before he had to muster up for the mission he had been given. Glancing down to catch the delighted grin on Sakura's little face below, he had to admit it had been rather worth the loss of a breakfast.

'_Sakura._'

That distinct hair, the color of cherry blossoms just opened, curled in the wind, noticeable even at this distance.

'_How fitting._'

With an uncharacteristic little smile, Itachi slipped out of the tree's comfortable fork where he'd been waiting for the last half hour and turned towards the village gate, headed for the meeting place his team used. Below, a six-year-old sent a cherry wood shuriken thudding against a dead tree in the clearing that had, until now, been a practice target for only one.

_tsuzuku_

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This isn't finished yet, though I was planning on turning it into a threeshot so it won't be long. This first, fortuitous meeting, will grow into something more in the next two chapters, which will take place when Sakura is ten and then possibly fifteen or seventeen. At the moment, there isn't romance unless you squint for it, but I'm marking it as romance for future chapters. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it ^^

Tsuzuku means "to be continued".

Your reviews fuel, and feed, the muse ^^

Aria, out.


	2. Communication

GASP! Two updates in two days? When does that _ever_ happen with me? Thanks to all my kind reviewers and especially to Sariasprincy, who wrote many nice PMs to me while I was working on this. I know it's insanely rare, but the muse was REALLY inspirational today, so you're all getting very lucky and receiving a truly fast update. You probably won't be lucky three times in a row though XD it'd be insane if I could finish a threeshot in three days =P

Here, the kids are ten (Sakura) and fifteen (Itachi), and we get a deeper glimpse at their feelings and such. No need to squint for romance in this chapter! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Not making any profit off of this, don't own Naruto or anything of the sort, etc, etc.

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**Chapter 2: Communication**

"Oh, Itachi-kun, before you go…"

He paused, turning back to give the Sandaime his full attention and wishing he didn't have to. Even clan heirs had the right to return back from ANBU missions weary, and he was especially tired after having spent most of the night and part of the morning sprinting through Konoha's forests to get Ibiki-taichou's message to the Hokage as soon as possible. But no member of the Uchiha clan complained to the village leader, no matter how grueling a night they had spent, running through the all-encompassing darkness of that moonless, starless night with only the powers of the Sharingan to keep him from crashing headlong into grasping branches.

So Itachi turned back, his face impassive, and waited for the Hokage to continue.

"I know this must be tiring for you, Itachi-kun," the Sandaime said, with rather deliberate apology in his voice, Itachi felt, "But I need you to inform Iruka-sensei at the Academy that he needs to cancel afternoon classes today and report back to me immediately after the kids have left for the day."

That was a runner's duty, a message like that worthy of someone of chuunin rank or less, but even as the thought of asking the Hokage to perhaps choose another for the task crossed his mind, Itachi caught the amused gleam in the old man's eyes.

For whatever reason, it drew his eyes down to the man's desk, where wizened fingers gently tapped a discarded shuriken that lay, almost buried, under the paperwork piled high on the tabletop.

It was like someone had drawn the blade of a kunai across his chest. Heat and pain blossomed like physical hurt, though the only sign of it showed in the miniscule tightening of Itachi's lips.

'_Sakura._'

Since his induction into the ranks of ANBU two years ago, and the year before that spent in grueling training for the ANBU examinations, he had been too busy to spend even a moment searching out that rose-haired slip of a girl he had met four years previous. Save for maybe chance glimpses in the marketplace, the girl always walking close to her mother's side, he hadn't had the luxury to watch her practice with his old set of wooden shuriken as she gained both speed and accuracy.

It was nearly three years of nothing.

Though the run had left his muscles feeling conspicuously fatigued, he hadn't felt short of breath then. Strange how his lungs would choose now to seize up and refuse to cooperate, his heartbeat suddenly thudding loud in his ears as he took in a steadying breath.

"I will inform Iruka-sensei of your orders immediately."

The Hokage's smile was benevolent. "See that you do. He and the students are behind the Academy in the forest today, doing field drills." His gaze drifted down to his papers momentarily. When his eyes lifted, the young, masked Uchiha was gone.

The Sandaime's smile turned mischievous, youthful in spite of his years. He'd had his doubts at first, but apparently Shisui had been right. The clan heir was showing interest in something more than his duties as a shinobi, and they all had to do with someone at the Academy and shuriken. And it didn't seem to have anything to do with his younger brother.

"Interesting," the man muttered to himself as he tapped a finger to the shuriken on his desk.

A short sprint away, Itachi snuck through the foliage that encompassed the Academy woods that doubled as their practice field from time to time, locating with ease the tan-skinned Academy instructor concealed from the eyes of his students as he watched them from a sturdy branch.

The man indicated only mild surprise at Itachi's appearance, and the young Uchiha felt a small flash of approval. He had liked Iruka-sensei, with his unwavering good-natured personality and staunch loyalty to the village, since his own years at the Academy. It was good to see that the man, seen through the eyes of his ANBU training, had skill worth his rank to respect as well. Usually people startled more when Itachi materialized out of nowhere without even a puff of smoke to mark his entrance.

"Itachi-kun," the Academy teacher greeted with a swift smile, his eyes leaving the children for only a moment, taking in the boy's ANBU regalia. His gaze went flat, concern in every line of his features. "News from Hokage-sama?"

ANBU regulations made Itachi nod curtly, his eyes watching Iruka under dark lashes. "Hokage-sama would like you to cancel afternoon lessons and report to him once the kids have left."

"Understood." The man's warm, chocolate-hued eyes flickered again from the children to the young man perched beside him on the tree-branch, and noticed the set of that face with the dark gaze that flickered from child to child, searching. Iruka stifled a warm smile that he knew would have sent Itachi off like a wraith through the shadows. "The children need supervision, and if you could point out any flaws I've missed, I will be grateful. The children, as well, would be thrilled if they got critique from an ANBU member."

The words were half reasoning, half request, and if Itachi knew (or guessed) the underlying thoughts that incited them, he revealed nothing. With a nod of acquiescence, he darted through the trees to another part of the forest, obsidian eyes scanning until he found, without fail, the color of cherry blossoms just opening.

Sakura, her rosy hair a beacon in the forest, crouched at the foot of an oak and watched attentively as Kiba at the base of another tree held up two fingers, then dipped a thumb.

She made the barest nod, trusting the Inuzuka's tracking senses to accurately report the number of "enemies" sneaking up on them. They were evenly matched, though an extra member of the team would have been nice to swing the odds in their favor. Unfortunately, their side was stretched thin to distract the sentries from their main force, which would cut through to where their flag was kept to win the game.

A quiet rustle on the other side of the trees, then a near-silent exhale, alerted Sakura that the opposing team was close.

With a howling yip, Akamaru launched himself at the other child shinobi, and Sakura and Kiba followed suit, pouncing on their fellow classmates.

Above, watching the battle unfold, Itachi managed to suppress the wince as the Academy pre-genin went from organized to brawling in three seconds flat. All sense of order broke down, punches and blunted practice kunai flew everywhere, the group ending in an all-out melee until they broke apart, Kiba and Akamaru to one side and Sakura to the other. The other two shinobi children fell back, retreating as Kiba and Sakura incautiously threw themselves forward.

Sakura's hand slipped into her kunai pouch, and suddenly, the motion catching Itachi's notice, she stuttered. Her body stumbled, breaking the synch of her motions for a split second as she brought out a blunted kunai, and from above, a dark shadow plummeted downward and pinned her to the ground.

...

The breath was knocked out of her, _hard_, her body pitching forward to crash to the grass. Pain scissored through her as tears sprang to her eyes. A kunai blade, dull but insistent, lay across her throat; the gesture told her everything she needed to know. The one pinning her was Sasuke. No one else in the class had as much control, and her cheeks flared with shame and embarrassment at him seeing her in this state.

But there was no time to contemplate it, at least not enough to let the emotion overtake her completely, because at almost the same moment as she realized that the boy she had respected for the last two years and just recently begun to idolized for something more had her pinned to the ground like a lepidopterist's butterfly, a familiar pair of dark, regulation boots appeared in her line of vision.

The flashback was instantaneous and powerful.

Lungs empty of breath, her sides aching, she could almost hear the mocking calls of "Forehead" all over again, the smell of dirt and honeyed grass in the summer sun as familiar to her as the voice that had echoed in her head for weeks on end that season at the age of six, the self-assured voice that ordered her to "Stay," and "Watch."

Itachi hadn't realized consciously deciding to leave his perch in the trees as he watched the battle, but there had been something different about watching his brother pin the girl to the ground. In the split second before she had been slammed into the dirt, he had seen the wide-eyed surprise and fear.

In the pit of his stomach, an unfamiliar emotion flared, strange and hot and consuming. It snarled in his chest as he landed like a dark wraith, soundless on the gently billowing grass, struggling to contain the desire to wrench his younger brother off the immobile, rosy-headed girl.

The other three jerked back at his appearance, only Sasuke and the girl holding their grounds (Sakura had no choice as she was still Sasuke's captive), and all five heads turned at the sound of Iruka's call through the forest. A flag had been captured, the game ended.

His otouto shifted off the girl, paying her no mind as she got to her feet. Itachi made a mental note to discipline Sasuke for his lack of manners at a later date, pushing up his porcelain ANBU mask so that the Academy students would stop staring at him with the wary fear of children in awe.

"Aniki!"

"Otouto, Iruka-sensei needs to meet with Hokage-sama, so your afternoon classes are canceled," Itachi told him, including the other pre-genin in his statement as his dark eyes flickered from one face to another, lingering only a little longer on Sakura's that the rest. "After the class goes over the field drill statistics, please inform Okaa-san that I will be late."

Sasuke, realizing the words were from Itachi the clan heir as opposed to Itachi his older brother, even if the not-quite-order involved their mother, nodded once with a quiet "Hai," and headed off in the direction of Iruka-sensei's call. He was thrilled to know his brother was home from his latest mission safe, but it was apparent in Itachi's clothes and mannerisms that his aniki was not yet off duty. Sasuke would wait until then to talk to his brother.

The other pre-genin followed the young Uchiha's lead, trotting off into the forest.

"Wait."

Sakura, about to follow the others, froze. Though the order was soft-spoken and held no name to indicate whom it was directed to, she knew it was meant for her. The tone was utterly reminiscent of that incident four years ago. Feeling a flutter of nervousness unfold in her gut, sending a chill down her spine, she turned to fix the fifteen-year-old with glass-green eyes.

She hadn't really seen him, ever, since that day when she was six, and she was surprised to find how clear and yet unclear her memories were.

His clothes were different, that was easily noticeable straight off. The Uchiha clan outfit she had seen him in before had been traded for a regulation ANBU uniform, though apparently his boots were the same make as before. She hadn't perceived a difference when she'd noted his footwear, with her face once more pressed to the dirt. He was taller too, though he had seemed tall to her four years ago. Now, he had the height of rapidly approaching adulthood. And the voice of one too. His quiet alto had become a more sober tenor. The face had lost the very last vestiges of childlike roundness, now all sharp angles that were, if possible, more aristocratic than before. Lines that had been barely visible four years ago were now marked, making Sakura wonder just what had put them there. But his eyes were the same as before, serious, observant, but warming. The passage of time seemed so obvious as her eyes followed the tilt of his head as he appraised her back.

They stood there for long minutes, her watching him, he contemplating her, until Itachi broke the silence.

"Why did you hesitate?"

A flush touched Sakura's cheeks as he turned to lead them out of the trees towards the Academy; she could remember exactly what had caused that little stutter during battle right before Sasuke had tackled her. "I-I…"

"Sakura."

She didn't even ask how he knew her name; she was hardly surprised. Though she hadn't seen him in four years, she had heard plenty. Uchiha Itachi was a shinobi prodigy, a genius. That he would figure out her name if he wanted to…was unsurprising.

But the tone was unyielding, though not harsh, and so she unclasped the kunai pouch at her waist, holding it out to him as evidence.

Itachi's obsidian eyes widened marginally at her wordless explanation. Inside the pouch was the bag that held the practice shuriken he'd given her years ago, their sides grown more worn since he had used them. She carried them with her still.

The strange emotion in his chest seemed appeased by this sign of their connection; the exchange between them had stuck with her as it had with him through the years. In trying to grab for a practice kunai, her fingers had closed instead on one of these, and her mind had been temporarily distracted. It had been enough for Sasuke to find an opening, but Itachi could hardly find it in himself to correct her. It had been partly his fault, though he felt no remorse over it.

Plucking one of them, an oak round that felt, now, rather lighter than necessary, Itachi spun it on his fingertip to Sakura's wide-eyed gaze. Not usually one for showboating, it was irresistible when around this slip of a girl; her admiration was practically intoxicating. Itachi was glad for the training that had allowed him to mask his emotions.

He dropped the practice shuriken back into the kunai pouch, and then surprised Sakura by pulled a flat, leather packet from his own kunai pouch strapped to his thigh.

"Itachi-san?"

Instead of allowing her to question him, he held the packet out to her wordlessly, almost daring her to take it, until she accepted it. It was the work of seconds to unwrap it.

"Oh!" The word was hardly more than a gasp, an intake of breath at what she found inside. Twelve, gleaming shuriken lay inside, each one fashioned from tempered steel that he had paid half the wages of a month-long mission for. They were unmarked and perfect save for a tiny, five-petal flower inscribed at one corner of each one.

"It is impractical to carve name kanji into true shuriken," Itachi explained calmly. "It keeps the weapon from flying true."

Sakura shook her head, her hands clasped around his gift, even as her mouth formed words of denial. "I can't-,"

Inopportune, a thick branch fallen from a tree made her stumble again, and the packet in her hands slipped, a single shuriken scoring a line down her thumb. A fat drop of crimson blood welled up as Sakura bit back a soft yelp.

"You cannot return them now," Itachi told her serenely, surprising her with a quick quirk of his lips, a smile. "You have blooded them; they are yours."

With her thumb in her mouth, Sakura's brows knit together into a tiny frown, knowing he was right. Old shinobi custom dictated that first blood on a new weapon denoted ownership. It showed that the owner had paid for the weapon in blood, and Sakura had heard once that some of the older ninjas pierced the balls of their thumbs with new kunai for the blooding. By ancient shinobi tradition, the shuriken were hers.

"Thank you," she told him, smiling with uncharacteristic shyness. "For the shuriken and the lesson. I never managed to thank you…"

The graceful roll of Itachi's shoulders, managing to make even a simple shrug fill with the sharp power of a shinobi's strength, said that her thanks were accepted.

"I don't have anyth-," but she did! Warmth bloomed at her cheeks as she recalled what she did have to leave him, but she forged on, "I…left something at the practice tree a while back. I didn't know if you would ever go back and check, but it's for you."

And then, flushing crimson at her own temerity, Sakura dove into the melee of bodies that was her pre-genin class, leaving Itachi feeling a little like the world under his feet had shifted a slight bit downward and left him behind.

…

It was early and he was, once again, skipping breakfast for a fascinating slip of a girl, but there was no real ire in that thought. Instead, only anticipation lodged tight under his breastbone as he slipped through early morning mist to the clearing he had once practiced so diligently at. At Sakura's shoulder level was a distinct groove in the dead tree that he most often used for target practice; it appeared the girl had unerring accuracy.

But a little higher than that, where he had once upon a time made a circle of kunai points, someone had carved out a little hollow. And inside, gleaming and untarnished, lay his present.

Three small circles of metal strung on a cord, each resembling a crude representation in dull metals the sleek, deadly beauty of a shuriken. It was amateurishly made, but his heart, so calm in battle, seemed to pick up its pace at the realization that the necklace was made so because it was made with young hands.

Sakura's hands.

Skin prickling, it was with infinite tenderness that Itachi fastened the necklace around his throat, feeling the cold metal warm to his flesh from the gift of metal that imitated an implement of death but meant much more than that.

_tsuzuku_

_

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_The necklace being described...it's the one Itachi wears in the anime (and manga? I can't remember...). I tried to make it as much canon as possible without killing off the Uchiha clan. So the necklace still exists (and is given a bit of history to it), and Sakura still has a crush on Sasuke. Don't worry though, her heart is really Itachi's! He wouldn't have it any other way, after all.

No squinting needed to see the romance in this one right? The muse is feeling smug that she got me cranking out another chapter in less than 24 hours, but I'm telling her to stuff it. I'm tired and my brain is filled with stress and chemistry, and I don't need her sass XD

Oh and the custom of blooding weapons is a bit of a modification from something I read in Tamora Pierce's book, Squire ^^

Thanks all my great reviewers! Leave me another if you liked this chapter! And all those who haven't reviewed either! The muse thrives on reviews, we all know she does ^^

Aria, out.


	3. Epiphany

This MIGHT be really confusing. For those of you who've already read the ORIGINAL Chapter three...this isn't it. That chapter will be back (I swear and promise). What happened is this. One of the reviewers mentioned that there could have been more between chapters two and three. After all, that's eight years that I didn't write about. And my crazy, scatter-brained, has-too-much-time-on-her-hands muse decided to run with it! It's now almost two in the morning where I live, and I've been writing straight for almost the last five hours o.O. I have class tomorrow at nine.

So, to sum all that up before I digress into a rant about my muse, I decided to write chapters of the events between when Sakura was ten and eighteen (about three or so extra chapters worth of stuff). So as not to confuse people terribly, the Rationale chapter of With Practice will be re-uploaded when this fic is well and truly completed. I wouldn't worry too much though. My muse has been scarily insistent of late.

The chapter turned out a little more angsty than I would have liked, but sometimes, things get misunderstood. You'll see what I mean ^^

Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto, but totally wish I did.

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**Chapter 3: Epiphany**

"Hmm…"

The quiet, contemplative sound was snatched up by the wind that circled the trees in the forest that skirted the Academy grounds, tickling the short, strawberry-cream strands of hair that brushed the back of the thirteen-year-old's neck. Eyes closed, the girl seemed utterly intent on the objects resting in her palms. Warm, smooth oak with a fine grain that was broken by name kanji engraved on one side sat snug in the hollow of her left hand; cold steel with bladed edges that could slice an incautious handler, a tiny flower with five petals visible in one corner lay flat on the open palm of her right.

Iridescent, green eyes slid open, bright with assured confidence. Slipping the wooden disk back into her kunai pouch, she pulled out another shuriken of burnished steel to replace it. Academy standard. It was serviceable, pitted in a few places from many months of wear, and lacked the dainty, deadly beauty of the weapon given to her three years ago.

Custom made. A soft rose hue colored her cheeks for a split second at the understated thoughtfulness of the gift. While heavier than her heaviest practice shuriken, the steel ones Itachi had given her were more versatile; their aerodynamic form allowed her greater range and their blades had never needed to be sharpened.

She weighed the one in her palm against the regulation shuriken that her parents had bought her the year before, and a small smile fluttered across her lips.

"That's what it was," she told herself with a soft laugh. "Mine are lighter."

She sent the petal-engraved weapon biting deep into the bullseye drawn in red paint on a tree-trunk across the clearing.

A victorious grin flashed across her elfin features. Though it was only an Academy regulation target, one where the bullseye was painted twice as large as on a regulation target to keep up a pre-genin's self-confidence, she couldn't help feeling a thrill of pride. It was the first time she had managed to send one of Itachi's shuriken into the center of a target. The miniscule weight difference between her Academy issue shuriken and those given to her by her taciturn benefactor had had her consistently missing by a noticeable margin.

It almost made her wish that she had just used the special shuriken from the start so that the disparity in weight wouldn't have affected her throws.

"Almost," she told herself with a tiny grin. She had lost too many regulation shuriken in the last two years since Iruka-sensei had finally begun teaching them to handle the star-shaped metal blades to regret her decision not to touch the ones that had been a gift until after she learned some accuracy.

"Maybe I could attach chakra strings to them, like the Suna boy from the chuunin exams," Sakura mused. "That way I wouldn't be in danger of losing them…"

Thoughts chasing one another around her head with creative ways to retrieve thrown shuriken, she jogged over to the target to tug her weapon free.

"Sakura."

With a soft yelp of surprise, Sakura whirled around, a quick blush stealing over her cheeks as she shoved her hands behind her back. "Sasuke-kun!" She winced as the edge of the shuriken sliced a line of fire down her palm. "Wh-where's Naruto?"

"The dobe's saying goodbye to Iruka-sensei," the dark-haired teen replied, sharp obsidian eyes catching his teammate's pained expression, though he made no comment of it.

"It's hard to believe Naruto's leaving for training with Jiraiya-sama," the rose-haired girl said quickly, slipping her shuriken back into her kunai pouch as stealthily as she could manage. The shallow cut on the palm of her hand throbbed in time with her rapid heartbeat.

"We are all going our own ways for a bit," the young Uchiha commented bluntly. "Naruto with Jiraiya-sama, me with Kakashi, and you with Tsunade-sama."

"It'll be strange, here at the village," she responded, her cheeks taking on familiar warmth as her aspen-leaf eyes flickered to the boy she had been crushing on since three years ago, "Without Naruto, and Kakashi-sensei, and you." The blush deepened at the way her voice wobbled on the last word; feeling horribly embarrassed, Sakura looked away.

Silence stretched out between them, worsening the girl's discomfort. Somehow the situation felt almost oppressive, her sense of nervous unease completely incongruous to how she felt around Sasuke when in battle. It was so _uncomplicated_ then! He was her teammate, her comrade, she trusted him to watch her back; she knew that even during the worst moments on the field, he and Naruto would be protecting her as she did them.

Waiting with him, _alone_ with him, in the Academy forest with no Naruto to act as a buffer, she couldn't help but feel a little out of place.

Sakura stifled the urge to sigh. The feeling that something was missing had been growing lately, even when her heartbeat danced to a faster rhythm around him.

A tiny frown marred Sakura's brow as she gave her rosy head a shake to clear it of such confusing thoughts. As if in answer to her irritation, the cut on her palm pulsing with pain. Feeling the stickiness of drying blood beaded down the gash in her flesh, she hoped Naruto would arrive soon. She needed to wash her hand without drawing attention to it, in case Sasuke asked questions she didn't really feel like answering, and there was little chance of achieving that out here in the forest.

"Sakura—,"

"Sakura-chan!"

"Finally!" she called, her lips quirking into a smile that was as much relief as greeting; the tone of inquiry in Sasuke's voice had been too interrogative for her comfort. "You're getting too much like Kakashi-sensei; perpetually late."

"Sakura-chan!" the blond whined in protest.

With a laugh, Sakura led the way to Naruto's favorite Ichiraku, allowing the blond's loud-mouthed chatter to wash away her confused thoughts for a while.

…

"Teme, Sakura-chan, I'm going to come back, better than I went! So you two work hard too!"

Sakura stood at the village gate by Sasuke's side, waving until Naruto and Jiraiya rounded a bend in the road and could no longer be seen. "Cheeky Naruto," she muttered wryly as she and Sasuke turned away. "Like we'll be slacking off while he's gone."

"Hn."

The silence as they walked down the sun-soaked street was more comfortable than earlier. Calmer. She didn't feel like her heart had been replaced with a frantically fluttering butterfly. Lunch had soothed her feelings, draining away the adrenaline that had been rushing through her veins, and Naruto's animated conversation had made her forget, if for a little while, that she wouldn't be seeing her teammates for the next two years. In the face of that, her feelings seemed so much less urgent.

Sort of, anyway.

Sasuke, too, seemed different. He appeared surprisingly relaxed in the afternoon's warmth and light. More approachable.

Mustering up her courage, Sakura managed a soft laugh. "The way Naruto talks, two years doesn't feel that long."

She hadn't been expecting a response, so she was surprised when the Uchiha beside her gave a shrug and replied, "It probably won't be. We'll all be too busy training to feel time passing."

He stopped by the front gate of the Uchiha compound. "We'll be back in no time."

And for a second, a quick smile flashed across Sasuke's face.

Sakura waited for the flush of heat, the sudden rush of light-headed happiness that came whenever Sasuke showed her any special attention. But it wasn't a blush and elation that caught her up. The usual thrill of girlish excitement never came, though her heartbeat pounded in her chest hard enough to drown out all other sounds.

It was all _wrong!_

Something inside her protested fiercely. The swift upward tilt of his lips, the flash of uncharacteristic warmth in his dark, cobalt eyes; both were sharply familiar, but not from her long association with the teammate standing in front of her. The expression was not his, and yet it drew heat to her skin like none of his ever had. Compelling her in a way she couldn't explain, she still felt resistance at her very core. The person she saw in that look wasn't Sasuke. Something was…missing. It was like being alone with him in the Academy forest; the feeling that something was off intensifying until she couldn't ignore it.

Her throat closed, making it hard to draw breath as her cheeks crimsoned, then went pale in recognition.

_Itachi._

In her teammate's face she could see the older Uchiha's sharp, aristocratic looks. They shared the same obsidian eyes, the quiet, confident self-assurance that was so striking. But they were inherently different. She could never mistake one for the other.

In a singular moment of clarity, she saw the last three years through unbiased eyes. Why hadn't she been conscious of how similar they were? Something in her had noticed.

Since she was ten, she had thought she had eyes only for Sasuke. But he hadn't been the one she was drawn to. What she had been seeing was the one who had believed in her when she was only six years old. She had seen his eyes. His straight-backed posture. His quiet manners. His high cheekbones. His lips.

Her heart had been looking for Itachi in every nuance of Sasuke.

And now, seeing Itachi's sharp smile on Sasuke's face, it felt as if she couldn't breathe for missing him. His almost brusque manners that contrasted his kindness towards her, the startling thoughtfulness she glimpsed and sometimes felt she barely comprehended, eyes that flashed crimson when they caught hers, the ebony hair that she secretly wondered would feel as silken to the touch as it looked, even the lines that accented his patrician features endeared him to her.

It all struck her in a rush that left her reeling and light-headed.

The depth of feeling terrified her.

…

"The way Naruto talks, two years doesn't feel that long."

The kunai flew wide of its mark, burying itself point first into the dirt nearly a foot to the left of the target and almost twenty feet past. Itachi didn't bother retrieving it; the strangeness of hearing that familiar voice on the other side of the compound wall had been almost disorienting.

"It probably won't be. We'll all be too busy training to feel time passing."

'_Sasuke._'

That strangely hot feeling, the one that brought back flashes of his otouto pinning a ten-year-old Sakura to the dirt during an Academy field exercise, curled around his gut, resisting him as he pushed it back. It was only the second time feeling its ruthless bite, and yet even with ANBU training it was difficult to subdue.

"We'll be back in no time."

There was no response save a short, sharp intake of breath.

"Sakura, you're white."

The undercurrent of concern in Sasuke's voice made his insides clench with something akin to nausea, and he was rounding the side of the main house before he realized his body's movements.

He went still in the building's shadow, seeing the girl through the compound's front gate.

Even in the warm, golden sunlight of the later summer's afternoon she was pale, her ivy-hued eyes wide with an emotion Itachi had seen often in the faces of enemy shinobi. Fear. Her entire body was tense, her gaze fixed on Sasuke but somehow looking through him.

Itachi realized, thoughts taking on that strangely detached cast he had developed to better focus during his ANBU training, that his skin seemed tight with cold. And, as medically impossible as it was, his insides seemed to have been replaced with nothingness. Tears and frustration he had been privy to, but never her fear. Not like this. It felt like a blade of ice slitting him across the sternum to leave numbness in its wake.

The strange, chilling pain grew only more intense at the realization that her eyes were on him.

"I…I think I need to…to go," Sakura stammered, her body taking an instinctive step back as the words forced there way out of her throat to lodge under Itachi's breastbone. "I'll see you tomorrow before you leave."

If Sasuke questioned the strangeness of Sakura's sudden desire to go, he knew her well enough not to mention it. Her emotions, always decently close to the surface, seemed as though they would break free of all restraint at any moment. He merely nodded ascent, replying with his usual, curt, "Tomorrow, Sakura," as his teammate turned, and fled.

He had stepped through the compound gate before noticing Itachi.

"Aniki?"

"It is almost dinner time," Itachi replied by way of explanation as he turned back towards the practice grounds, giving Sasuke only a second's glimpse of the strange flatness in his brother's eyes that made them look so…shuttered. "I will see you in the dining hall."

It was only after his hand protested in pain that Itachi realized he had been gripping the hilt of one of his spare kunai hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

The ache in his hand mimicked the pain in Sakura's, pain he had no way of knowing of, as she pressed one of his practice shuriken to her chest and murmured his name with the frightened awe that came with newly realized love.

_tsuzuku

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_

I'm SOOOOO sorry! Firstly for putting Itachi through emotional distress, and secondly for the somewhat angsty undertones to this chapter. It's just that, well, I think love would be kind of scary. Terrifying, in fact. At least at first before you got a chance to calm down and assess your feelings and then be all happy ^^ As to Itachi's unhappiness...misunderstandings happen. You'll get to see how he deals with this in the next chapter XD (I already know how I want it to go and what's going to happen.)

For those of you who've read the original Chapter three, you know where this fits in ^^

Oh! If you feel like reviewing this chapter but the site tells you that you've already submitted a review for this chapter and won't let you submit another one, you can either submit a review on a different chapter, or PM me ^^ I would love to hear what you guys think of this new addition to the story! For those of you reading this for the first time, I'm sure that review button down there is still fully functional XD

The muse says that sweets of all kinds help her creative (and whip-cracking) abilities ^^

Aria, out.


	4. Intentional

**STOP!** If the chapter three you read and remember involved Sakura at the age of eighteen, GO BACK! The third chapter has been edited and you need to reread it! If you read the chapter three where Sakura was THIRTEEN, you may continue ^^

This chapter's supposed to be kinda short and funny, and the title doesn't make sense until the end XD hope everyone enjoys it!

Disclaimer: Making no profit off this because Naruto isn't mine (more's the pity...)

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**Chapter 4: Intentional**

"Nothing," Sakura muttered irritably to herself as she strained to see over the pile of scrolls in her arms. "I've checked every shelf in the main library and _nothing!_" She wrinkled her nose, rubbing a scar that ran across the first two fingers of her right hand with a rueful air as she nudged the front door to Hokage Tower with a foot.

More than a year ago, she had considered the possibility of finding a way to control shuriken – or at least recall them – in the way Kankurou of Suna had during her first chuunin exams. It had been a passing thought, but one that had refused to leave her, leading to experiments that had not been as…successful as she would have liked. She touched the scar again, thinking of the other ones that laced her wrists and forearms. Her budding skills as a medic, having fully blossomed only recently, had not been able to match the speed with which she had collected injuries in her attempt to better utilize her favorite weaponry.

In the end, she had stopped trying to find substitutes for the chakra strings that were used in the Puppet Technique, leading to this latest exploration of Konoha's archives. So far, her searches had turned up nothing.

Suna seemed rather too adept at guarding the secrets of Puppetry.

And Sakura was too busy working under Tsunade's tutelage to visit the Land of Wind to request the knowledge herself.

"I'm running out of scrolls," the rose-haired girl sighed, gingerly navigating the stairs of Hokage Tower, by feel and memory more than anything else due to the scrolls in her hands that piled so high and impeded her vision. She nibbled her bottom lip, a gesture she often used when frustrated. The lack of progress recently had been disheartening, and though she hated to admit it, she did not want to concede defeat. Her recent growth in strength and medical jutsu had given her much self-confidence, and it was irritating how the lack of information was keeping this technique from her, especially when she had set her heart on learning it.

A small smile fluttered across her features as she remembered the feel of smooth-grained wood against her palm. She had practiced with those wooden-disk shuriken so often since the age of six, she could remember every ridge and groove in the individual weapons if she but closed her eyes. Learning to manipulate chakra threads to retrieve her practice weaponry was one more way to make certain she would never lose them.

The smile faded from her face.

She was already short one shuriken through her thoughtlessness, not having factored in her chakra-enhanced strength during a recent training session. Her shuriken had shattered upon impact with the target, a pile of splinters and several weighted, lead cores all that remained from the incident. They were tucked away in her desk drawer now, wrapped in one of her old handkerchiefs; she hadn't been able to bring herself to throw it away. Nor had she been able to stop herself from acting the total fool and _crying_ herself to sleep that night.

Thinking back on it now, Sakura managed a soft, weak chuckle that was more wry amusement than anything else. She hadn't realized how much those shuriken had meant to her, affecting her life so subtly that she hadn't noticed, until she'd done one irreparable damage.

She probably hadn't needed to cry over it though…

"Scrolls," she admonished, forcing herself to focus on the task at hand: figuring out just how to open the Northwest archive door with her hands full. "Chakra strings would come in so handy right now," she muttered, only half joking as she shifted the load in her arms just enough to grip the doorknob and push the door open. "There has to be maybe one or two I haven't…"

The rest of the words died on her lips.

"Sakura."

She was no longer an excitable genin; she stifled the gasp of surprise before it escaped her, schooling her features to calm. She had forgotten that the Northwest archive was where ANBU members came to file their mission reports.

Struggling to speak past a constricting throat, she forced out the words with an attempted semblance of normalcy. "Itachi-san. I'm just…just here to re-shelve these," she managed finally, hating the sudden rush of confusion and happiness and embarrassment and heat that made the heart in her chest quiver and beat double-time. Caught up in studying under the current Hokage's tutelage, she hadn't had much time to spare thinking about the elder Uchiha brother, but seeing him like this, so suddenly and without warning, brought every single passing thought of him she had had in the past year rushing to the forefront of her mind. The heat of them nullified the chill of early winter seeping in through the archive walls more effectively than the library's heating system.

Hastily trying to scrub the wayward memories from her mind, she spilled the scrolls out onto a nearby table and set to her task with a will, not sparing the obsidian-haired Uchiha a glance.

Leaning against the side of a bookshelf, the ANBU operative seemed completely unperturbed by her presence.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

As impassive as he seemed, his attention was focused on her, and had been since her footfalls had been audible through the dense wood of the archive door.

It had been months, more than a year actually, since he had last seen her, and it took all the impressive self-control cultivated by nineteen years as the heir to the Uchiha clan, not to show more than a cursory interest in what she was doing as she shuttled scrolls from the table she was using to various stacks in the archive room. He had heard, in an oblique fashion from his otouto, that she would be busy for the next few years while her two other teammates left on training trips to become more skilled in the shinobi arts, but he hadn't been expecting such a change in her routine.

The occasional, lingering trips to the marketplace for groceries stopped, as did her visits to the bookstore. She no longer spent several afternoons a month shopping with her blonde friend, though the two seemed to spend no less time with each other in spite of Sakura's preoccupation. In fact, he had spotted them often, arguing over the contents of a scroll or taking a quick lunch as they discussed chakra manipulation.

"Notable Kunoichi of Sunagakure."

Sakura, a bookshelf away, stiffened at the sound of his voice. She had been intent on shelving her research material and wondering why the heat that warmed the building to stave off winter's growing chill somehow seemed stifling in the archive room. She would have assumed heat to negatively affect old scrolls. Perhaps she would mention to Shizune that the heating system in the northwest wing seemed broken…

"Wars in the Land of Wind. History of the Puppet Brigade."

He was reading off the titles of the scrolls she had left on the table, a sort of hooded interest in the dark eyes that flickered to her, catching her gaze through the open spaces in the shelf standing between them. "You appear to either be researching Suna's participation in the Second War, or planning an invasion on our current allies," he said, expression mild. "Which is it?"

About to answer the question sensibly, she registered the subtle lilt to his tone, the curl at the end of his sentence catching her attention. Was he…_teasing_ her? "Invasion," she blurted, responding with gentle sarcasm, as she would have to the same question by Naruto, then flushed when Itachi raised a mocking eyebrow.

"I-It's just research."

"By your actions, I take it your project is not going smoothly?"

The fourteen-year-old shrugged, turning away with another collection of scrolls to shelve in her hands to hide her expression, not quite sure how to respond. Her search of the Konoha archives had been unsuccessful in finding more than vague hints at the technique that had been used with much success during the last Great Shinobi War, but that was hardly the reason for her diffident outward attitude. She had vented her feelings of frustration for the lack of information weeks ago. That, she could deal with. His sudden presence here, reminding her with aching sharpness of things out of her control, was a little more difficult.

"What are you researching?"

"Tsunade-shishou has been training me as a medic, and thought I could use practice in techniques that required high levels of chakra control," Sakura replied with a vague attempt at a smile. Her shishou _had_ asked her to practice with various techniques, though the one she was currently researching wasn't one of them. "I just haven't been able to find any reliable information on this one."

As the older Uchiha scanned the remaining scrolls on the table, she watched him surreptitiously, under the guise of organizing the research materials as she put them away. Some of the tension she had felt was now ebbing away, leaving in its place a sort of catlike curiosity, the temptation to court danger.

Not that she thought Itachi dangerous…

Her lips made a slight upward tilt, the expression barely registering on her porcelain-smooth features. Uchiha Itachi _was_ inherently dangerous. The fact was common knowledge; he was a clan prodigy, a member of the ANBU elite and captain of a squad since he'd turned sixteen, deadly in battle. But he had never frightened her that way. Her feelings might fill her with confusion, shyness, occasional moments of awe and surprise, but never fear. The only time she had felt such apprehension was over a year ago, the day her crush for Sasuke had died. And even then, her feelings had been due to the strangeness of her epiphany and nothing to do with the object of her thoughts.

The contact she actually had with him was minimal in spite of the taciturn kindness he showed her when they chanced to cross paths. It was just that the unknown was always a little bit daunting at first.

But the fates had conspired to leave her alone with her benefactor again, and it was hard not to want to make the most of this unanticipated opportunity when he seemed willing to instigate conversation. Some small portion of her mind protested. Itachi was a fool's antithesis, too long spent with him and he would realize her budding affections. But months spent studying under Tsunade had rubbed off a little of the older woman's recklessness onto the rose-haired girl.

"The Puppet Technique."

Startled out of her own thoughts, Sakura's ivy-hued eyes shot to the Uchiha's calm, dark-cobalt gaze. She hadn't thought to hear her research so casually named.

"It appears I'm correct," Itachi surmised at the surprise that was so clear on her face. She had yet to fully master the ability to hide her feeling when truly startled. "I didn't think there were any accurate records of it in the archives."

"There aren't."

Much more adept at concealing his thoughts, Itachi hid the smile that threatened to curve his lips. He had been waiting for just this admission, though it had taken longer than expected and more coaxing on his part than he had anticipated.

"I have found that clan libraries are more informative in the way of techniques than those found in Hokage Tower."

Eyes the color of spring leaves widened marginally at the implication in his words, growing, if that was even possible, more lucid than before until they resembled two limpid pools of green. She was no idiot; she had read into his invitation as soon as he had voiced it. With a quick upward tilt of his lips that made her eyes flicker with strange emotion, he collected the remaining scrolls and re-shelved them with surprising alacrity.

If Sakura felt suspicion at the ease with which he had found the proper places for the remainder of her research, ease which could only have been borne of someone overly familiar with the contents of the Northwest archive room or at least with her particular line of research, she said nothing of it.

"Come."

Itachi led the way out of the archive stacks, maintaining with some difficulty his usual aura of decorum. The thrill of masculine triumph that sang through him manifested itself only in a subtle gleam in his dark-cobalt eyes.

It had been more than a year since his last conscious effort to see Sakura, and even with the knowledge that something in the innocent girl might fear the ruthless shinobi he could be, he could no longer just stand idly by.

He possessed little selfishness; to say otherwise of himself would have been base false modesty. A shinobi was meant to be selfless, sacrificing themselves in the line of duty for family, friends, and village, and Itachi strove to be all that was expected of him in that vein of thought. But for her, he could succumb to that basic human characteristic. The desire to see her, speak to her, was more overpowering.

He _missed_ her.

And if it meant that he had to bribe her with the lure of the knowledge hidden in the Uchiha clan library after discovering just what she had been researching for weeks, waiting in the Northwest archive room for hours with a mission report as his flimsy excuse at being there on the first free day he had had in a full month, in a fashion that some would have considered beneath him, just to speak with her, so be it.

The idea of not doing so had not even crossed his mind.

_tsuzuku

* * *

_

If you haven't picked up on it, the reason why this chapter is titled Intentional is because, while Sakura thinks that finding Itachi in the Northwest archive room is pure and utter chance, Itachi's thoughts make it plain that he's been lying in wait for her for some time. That's right ^^, this meeting was totally NOT chance, orchestrated by one Uchiha Itachi. The man is putting his ANBU skills to use in...creative ways...

Anyway, hopefully you guys are enjoying this continuation of the With Practice-verse! The chapters 3-6 are meant to span the time between when Sakura is ten in chapter two, and the time when Sakura is eighteen in the now-chapter-seven. For those of you reading With Practice for the first time...ignore the last two sentences ^^ it's just too confusing to explain.

The muse is a smug bug...go feed her so she leaves ME alone XD I'm pretty sure this is causing me to lose sleep because of my crazy drive to write...

If you guys want to see fanart for ItaSaku, Non-Mass, inspired by a With Practice type fic that I've yet to upload on site, check my profile for the link to my deviantART! I'm under the same name I use here!

As always, your reviews fuel my desire to write and eggs the muse along in goading me to finish this faster ^^

Aria, out.


	5. Bafflement

Gah it's FINALLY here! Took a bit of a while because the muse decided she'd much rather work on some other oneshots and such...having fun and doing whatever she wanted with other ItaSaku fic ideas, but I finally took away her sugar for a while and reminded her that this story HAD to be finished or I'd have angry reviewers on me like hornets on a hive-kicker. So here it is! I feel a tad unsatisfied with the middle (which is where I had the most trouble), but I did enjoy the emotional perspective of this. And I can't wait for the sixth and final chapters of this fic!

Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, the characters of Naruto are not mine and so I'm not making any money off of writing this...those lovely things belong to Kishimoto, lucky man.

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**Chapter 5: Bafflement**

Blood. The metallic tang that permeated the clearing was distinctive, and he was well acquainted with the smell.

Droplets of bright, deep crimson dotted the blades of new spring grass, turning the cool air sharp with the familiar, pungent scent. His muscles tensed without warning, a kunai readily finding its way into his hand, even as his mind assessed the lack of threat in the clearing. It was a reflex born of countless missions, and one that had kept him alive on more than one occasion.

But knowing that there was no danger did little to assuage the sudden rush of adrenaline as he stooped to swipe a finger to the viscous, scarlet liquid. It was undoubtedly blood that he slicked between his index and thumb, and a cold chill clenched his stomach.

The fresh blood wasn't his, leaving only one other option. No one else frequented this particular clearing.

'_Sakura._'

But it had been almost a year since the last time he had found blood here that hadn't been his. Sakura's talents as a medic had grown in leaps and bounds. Like her mentor and teacher, the ability to heal was so deeply ingrained in her now that, even on the battle field, her body would automatically heal itself of injuries unless she was dangerously low on chakra or utilizing her powers in a way that called for complete control.

A quiet hiss escaped him, the only indicator of his frustration…and concern.

Even knowing that a shinobi's life was naturally filled with injury, it bothered him that Sakura's new training routine drew blood. The crimson drops that gleamed like dark rubies on the grass were a testament to the difficulty of whatever she wished to master, one more thing for villages across the shinobi nations to put down against the day Sakura would merit her own page in the bingo books.

Admittedly, this was not a reason to be pleased, but Itachi couldn't help the warm rush of pride he felt at every successful mission the girl completed. It was proof to him that she was skilled. Powerful. _Safe._

Her strength was something that filled him with contentment whenever he saw her leaving from or returning to the village; it painted such a contrasting picture to the child she had been ten years ago.

But the blood dotting the clearing floor still rankled.

Reminding himself that practice made a shinobi stronger, he stood and focused on his own training. Kunai and shuriken flew across the clearing as he darted from one tree to the next, focusing his chakra to his feet as he shot through the air like a black clad wraith.

'_What sort of technique is she practicing that draws blood?_'

Sending a kunai straight into a notch already cut into the trunk of a nearby tree, Itachi frowned; his thoughts would not focus on the task at hand, drifting to the subject of Sakura's new training unbidden.

But it was a reasonable question. Sakura was a medical-nin and a chakra specialist, and neither of those called for training that involved drawing blood except possibly chakra scalpels, which she had mastered already at the age of fourteen.

The only other times that he had encountered a Sakura who was roughhoused and bleeding had been—,

The cold feeling in his gut turned instantly to a lump of heat that slid down his throat to his stomach, burning everything in its path. The last kunai thrown sliced through the tree branches to bury itself nearly a handbreadth into wood with unnecessary force.

The only times Sakura was injured in the confines of village was during spars with her former sensei and her teammates, who had returned from their training trips only six months back.

The jealousy was hot as it rushed through him, turning the already strangely dichromatic world of the activated Sharingan into a wash of red. He leapt down from the trees to collect his thrown weapons with that feeling curled around his throat like a strangling vise.

It wasn't that she sparred with her teammates; he had never once asked her to spar with him so there was no logical reason for him to feel such a sudden rush of heat that comprised of both anger and pain.

He had first met her here when, as a tiny child, she had tripped over his kunai pouch and into his private training ground. Meaning to tell her to leave, he had caught sight of her tear-streaked face and found himself instead teaching her how to properly throw shuriken. The old practice set he had gotten from his father for his fifth birthday now belonged to her. And in spite of having seen and spoken to her in a myriad of other places, this was the location that evoked the deepest feelings for her. This was where it had begun, the place that was between just the two of them, though that thought never really got articulated. Though neither of them really saw the other here, enjoying the clearing for private training rather than one with a partner, it was a space that was only known to the two of them. Theirs.

And Itachi couldn't deny the all-consuming jealousy that thrummed through his blood at the thought of Sakura sharing it.

Of sharing Sakura.

He wanted to know who it was she practiced with, just so he could convince them that it was better worth their..._time_ to enjoy the company of other people that weren't rosy-headed top class medics.

For the first time he could remember, he couldn't concentrate enough to finish his session, hurtling through the trees at high speed to put as much distance between himself and the clearing. As if that would somehow leave the nauseous heat in his stomach behind.

…

"I'm fine."

He'd meant to just give the clearing a cursory check, to discover if any new blood had been spilled, but then her voice had come softly through the trees and he had stopped, in spite of warring instincts that said Sakura would see this as a blatant invasion of her privacy if she ever found out.

"You don't need to act so overprotective. I'm a medic; I can handle myself. And, unlike some people, I know my limits."

There was a subtle edge to her voice, he could hear it as clearly as whoever she was speaking to must have, but it was tempered with a sort of underlying warmth that indicated genuine caring. Hearing it, the words ones that might have been spoken to a friend of special merit, made his left hand tense with wanting to curl into a fist.

The answering voice was soft, subtle, and unfortunately, indistinguishable under the susurration of the leaves all around him. Leaves brushed against leaves in the wind, drowning out all hope of recognizing the voice of Sakura's companion.

"No, I'm serious. I really _will_ be fine, Sasuke-kun."

His otouto.

He should not have been surprised, should not have felt his skin grow cold, but it took him a moment to shunt the unwanted emotion aside. He should have expected it; even he had heard of Sakura's one-time crush on his otouto during their genin years.

He had apparently been misguided into believing that her feelings had faded.

Or perhaps he had just wanted too much for it to be true to consider that it might not.

The confusion of emotions, jealousy at the fore, made the world momentarily tremble in his vision. It took him a moment to realize that Sakura entered the clearing alone.

She wasted no time in scanning the place as he had, but quickly began warming up, her body twisting from fluid dodges to harsh strikes in a kata he had never seen before. With her eyes closed, she seemed utterly concentrated on her movements, the slow motions picking up speed until her limbs were blurs encased in black leather. Over and over she performed the kata, seamlessly transitioning from the end to the beginning again. Around the fifth pass her hands began to glow.

Though he'd seen _this _particular technique before, it was mesmerizing to watch chakra coalesce around her palms and fingertips, knowing how deadly a single touch could be. He knew how seriously Sakura took her powers; she'd only ever turned them on another person once.

If the rumors were to be believed, Sakura had, in a moment of desperation against a missing-nin, fought tooth and nail until she had enough space to tap a knuckle against the man's forehead. And exploded his brain inside his skull.

Itachi, having heard from Sasuke how their team had been frighteningly outnumbered and Sakura was forced to make the choice between bringing the nuke-nin in dead and dying herself, couldn't feel even a hint of compassion for the man who had attacked her.

The girl kept that particular power of hers under tight wraps though; Itachi could understand that, at sixteen, it felt like too much to handle.

He turned his thoughts back to the present as he watched Sakura complete a final set of her kata and come to a stop, not even winded.

It wasn't until her lustrous, green-apple eyes slid open that Itachi realized he had been watching her for the better part of an hour. It was high time to go.

He slid out of the trees, his sandaled feet silent as he made his way down to the grass, but he caught sight of her rummaging through her kunai pouch to pull out a shuriken (one of his, he wondered, chest tightening at the thought) then performed a series of hand seals.

His eyes widened minutely as the blue glow at her fingertips connected to the shuriken, extended outward, and became chakra threads.

The Puppet Technique.

…

There was a warm thrill of delight that flooded her every time the technique managed to work without a hitch, in spite of the fact that she had mastered this one a number of weeks ago. She had been surprised at how difficult it had been to learn this new skill when it appeared quite a number of Suna shinobi were well versed in it.

Of course, they hadn't had to learn it from an incomplete description found in the journal entry of an Uchiha shinobi from the Second War.

It had taken her the better part of an afternoon with Itachi at the clan's impressive library to find the manuscript she had needed. But thoughts like that would only distract her from her training, something she couldn't afford if the already-wavering chakra threads were anything to go by, so she pushed them out of her mind for the time being.

Itachi had become…

No!

She snapped her fingers together sharply, tying off the threads that bound the shuriken so it'd still spin as it was meant to when thrown, despite the fact that it was now connected to her chakra as an extension of her body. She was here to train, not to dwell on her feelings for the Uchiha clan heir.

The chakra threads lengthened as she exhaled, and then she was flinging her shuriken, two to each hand, out with a practiced flick of her wrists.

Four bladed weapons thunked deep into the tree trunks around her as a grin of success flitted across her face. Now came the hard part. Getting those shuriken back. Deeply embedded as they were, they would be difficult to pull from the wood, and more difficult to control once she had them out. It was the reason why she'd suffered injury in the past few weeks.

Getting a puppet to do your bidding was much easier.

With a quick, shallow breath to steady herself, she flexed her fingers, and jerked her weapons free.

The bladed weaponry flew back to her, carefully controlled by the movement of her fingers. With a move she had practiced time without number, she snatched them out of the air at the last second, hissing a little in frustration as one bit into the leather of her glove and scratched the palm of her hand. It wasn't the injury, but rather the failure of her technique, that irritated her.

With a sigh, she sent them out again and again and again, recapturing them each time with varied success until her gloves were crisscrossed with tiny cuts, and her palms ached from being healed so repeatedly.

Growling in frustration, she flung her shuriken, putting more than a little of her anger behind the throw. They spiraled out far into the edges of the clearing, almost past the dead tree at the north edge.

Lightning clarity touched the shadows that had become the target of her weapons, and with a gut-wrenching sensation, Sakura realized there was someone there. A someone with dark eyes and long, dark hair pulled back into a tie at the nape of his neck.

"Itachi!"

She didn't consider that he was an ANBU rank shinobi, that he could handle himself against four shuriken (even ones backed up by the strength of her monumental irritation). As her vision tunneled, all that was left in her mind was the singular thought that she was the reason behind the weapons now hurtling straight for his face, and the utterly overwhelming desire not to be.

She didn't think as she channeled more chakra to the threads tying her to her weapons, and _yanked_.

Like lightning bolts of steel, they shot through the air, now away from the Uchiha and towards herself. And like lightning drawn too close to a lightning rod, there was no way to keep herself from getting hurt. Gritting her teeth, she braced herself for the hot pain that would accompany the shuriken as they bit into her flesh.

But it never came.

The throbbing heat and gentle dribble of blood down her arms that she'd expected weren't happening, and she slowly opened her eyes…

Only to start back in shock as she found herself nose to nose with Uchiha Itachi, whose eyes seemed to burn crimson with what she could only interpret as anger, her shuriken caught, unbloodied, in his hand.

A gasp lodged in her throat.

"What is this."

It wasn't even a question, just a demand for answers, and it was so unlike his usual stoic kindness that she quivered on the inside in confusion and sudden nerves. Waves of his emotions seemed to roll off him, filling the air with a sharp darkness that refused to abate.

She couldn't understand why he was so upset, other than perhaps the fact that she had made use of the information about the Puppet Technique in that Uchiha clan scroll, but he had been willing to lend it to her as reading material and hadn't questioned her motives.

"I was…using Puppetry to recall my shuriken; it's to make sure I never run out of weapons," she admitted, proud of herself for refraining from the stammer that wanted to bubble to her lips at his proximity.

"Hn."

Those blazing, crimson eyes roved across her face searchingly, so that she wished to close her eyes against the heat in them, and suddenly he was retreating, the loss of his warmth making her skin prickle. He was leaving her, turning away to slip back into the trees, and a lump of hurt rose to her throat unbidden. Unwanted. She ruthlessly shoved the feeling back as the shuriken he'd held gently clattered to the grass.

"Next time, have someone spot you when you're practicing that technique. That should lessen your rate of injury."

"W-wait!"

He froze, stilling as she called out to him even if he didn't turn around, and for an instant Sakura wished the ground would just open up and swallow her whole. She could have bitten her own tongue to stop that traitorous word from popping out. But now she was committed; she would have to say _something_.

"Itachi-san…if you don't mind…"

Only then did he turn.

And even from a distance she could see those crimson eyes fading to the familiar, dark obsidian she was accustomed to seeing, once more warm with that emotion she sometimes saw and yet couldn't name. The one that made her mind whirl in giddy confusion.

"If you need to practice this technique again, tell me," his words were soft as they reached her. "I will be willing to help."

She nodded, "I promise," only too relieved that he had agreed to stay.

The clearing was their place, the one shared between them. Bringing some one else, even Naruto or Sasuke, to it, would have felt too strange and invasive to allow.

But she could never tell him that, the same way she would never _dare_ to tell him that the reason she had first considered using the Puppetry was because she didn't want to lose something he had given her as a gift.

_tsuzuku

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_

Anyway! One more chapter to go before I post the final chapter and this story is DONE! Is anyone ELSE excited?

Hopefully you enjoyed this (rather belated) chapter of With Practice! I'd also like to let you guys know that I've got a deviantART account under the name Aria-Illusine, which is where fanart for this series will be posted! I'm thinking of one per chapter, though drawings sometimes take my effort with me than stories do... Anyway, my profile has a link to my dA if you guys would like to see my artwork; there's already one picture up there.

The muse has been deprived of cookies for a bit because she wouldn't be nice and help me out with this chapter, so she's sending out a message to all of you asking for more sugar because she needs them to whip-crack and get me writing more!

Aria, out.


	6. Confidence

Yaaaaayy! It's finished! Well, this chapter anyway ^^ I'm so excited! Itachi TOTALLY took over writing this...in ways that I can't even fully explain (though I'll try down at the bottom of the chapter ^^) and made this go places I hadn't even THOUGHT of! So I hope you really like his little changes! The muse says thank you for the sugar that kept her going! I'm not used to writing battle scenes, so hopefully I did a good job here ^^

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto and am not making money off this, but it'd be nice if I could have XD

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**Chapter 6: Confidence**

Emerald eyes fluttered open at the familiar crunch of regulation boots on frosted grass. Her body was relaxed; it knew this particular individual's chakra well and there could be no one else here in their practice clearing at sunset but him.

The day's last sunlight lent a golden hue to his pale skin, bringing out the warmth she usually saw in his dark-cobalt eyes with greater clarity. In the usual, sable attire of the Uchiha clan, he melted into the shadows, ghostlike in spite of the light that touched his aristocratic features. What might have been the flash of a smile touched his lips, but the claw-like silhouettes of bare branches scattered across the clearing obscured it, making her uncertain.

"You are not here to train?" His soft voice carried well through the crisp, February air.

Sakura shook her head, resisting the temptation to pull the thick cloak around her shoulders closer to her slim frame. "I only wanted to think a moment. I can leave if you need to use the clearing."

It was not an unusual statement. In the year since Itachi had begun helping her with her usage of the puppet technique, she had found herself coming across him more and more often in their clearing. And she had made the same comment on occasion, to be met with varying degrees of agreement.

"No, I am here for the same reason you are," he said, coming to lean his back against a tree standing across from her. "To think."

The chilly air grew colder, making her breath fog on her lips as the sun sank lower to the horizon. All was still, not even a faint breath of wind stirring the leafless branches that sent long, grasping fingers across the blue-grey sky. It would have been almost peaceful if not for the uncertainty that tainted her thoughts.

"My otouto mentioned starting training for ANBU examinations this year."

Viridian eyes flickered, surprise widening them as she glanced to him and away. Somehow, Itachi had perceived the reason behind her melancholy that evening, and chosen to bring it up.

"He mentioned you were considering it as well."

Even in the half-light, Sakura was certain the sudden flush in her cheeks must be clearly visible. She _had_ been thinking of joining Konoha's elite, but ANBU rank was difficult to achieve, even for a Hokage's apprentice. She'd been having second thoughts and found herself heading to the practice clearing to avoid making a decision for a little while, but the world seemed to find amusement in forcing her to face the issue, whether she wanted to or not.

"Considering," she admitted finally, allowing a wry grin to touch her lips. "I wasn't…" her words melted away under the intensity of Itachi's gaze.

Cheeks warming further, she discovered herself forcing back a stammer to explain with ever mounting embarrassment, "I'm only…I mean sixteen's really early… And I don't know how…how prepared I am…" Her breath clouded as she sighed and went silent, not wanting to dig herself into a deeper hole.

"You think you aren't ready." Itachi had stepped away from his previous position, the action prompting Sakura to follow suit, to catch her eyes with an onyx gaze, his head cocked in an air of contemplation.

Sakura was the first to look away.

"I…yes."

He made a soft noise in the back of his throat, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him nod decisively.

"Spar with me."

The confusion that flooded her overrode the sting she had felt at his casual agreement of her own evaluation; the vague hope that he would see her differently. Her viridian eyes clouded with it, bewildered and disoriented at his words.

"What?"

"I will assess your skill level," he explained casually, stripping off his leather gloves and tucking them into his kunai pouch with deceptive nonchalance. "Spar with me."

He had never asked her to do this, never made that step before, and Sakura had no idea how to react. The very idea of it made her skin tingle with latent adrenaline. It would be a chance to fight one of the most skilled shinobi she knew, and even if the outcome of the fight was probably set from the moment it began, it would give her a chance to test herself against his abilities. It would be a realistic measure of her own talents.

But even as that was flooding through her mind, she caught Itachi's gaze and gasped, logic and reasoning evaporating like water spilled on the Suna sand at midday.

His eyes were blood-red and crimson, jet-black tomoe already swirling in dizzying circles.

"Run."

She didn't even think, didn't let her mind analyze his reasoning behind such an order. Her body knew who was the stronger shinobi, could hear the near-feral amusement that tinted the Uchiha's rich baritone, and what was the smart option.

Itachi's voice promised danger in ways she couldn't even imagine.

Instinct whirled her around and she fled, hurtling through the trees like a rose-hued flash in the dying sun.

Her heart hammered in her chest, adrenaline thrumming through her body. Being chased like this, training every sense of her body to hyper-awareness so her pursuer wouldn't catch her blind, was both frightening and strangely exciting. The light all around her was dying, and she almost felt like a last streak of the sunset.

But she didn't have long to contemplate something so…poetic.

The heir to the Uchiha clan was chasing after her through the forests of Konoha, and if she didn't think of something fast, she would be nothing more than a smear across the dirt. Figuratively speaking. She knew instinctively that Itachi would never put her in any real harm, but just because he was at a higher skill level than she was, didn't mean she wasn't going to put up a fight.

Every leap off the tree branches was a jarring force as she pushed herself to create as much distance between herself and the Uchiha as possible. She had stamina for distance runs, by channeling a little chakra into each step when she began to tire she could go for hours without stopping, but in quick, distancing sprints where she needed to conserve chakra for a fight, she was definitely lacking.

'_Note to self: sprints and extra stamina training,_' Sakura noted as she quickly scanned for possible places to battle. She was just reaching the outskirts of the training forests, where the trees grew thicker and denser for more difficult practical lessons, and only minutes would take her deep into the woods where it'd be too dark to use the dying light to her advantage. Fighting against a craftier and more powerful shinobi than herself, she would need every advantage she could get, and picking the battlefield was one of her few available options.

'_Not too many trees; too easy to get caught in a genjutsu._' She knew from personal experience how easily one could be trapped in an illusion when surrounded by the rustle of trees all around.'_A wide clearing would be ideal…someplace familiar._' Gritting her teeth as she put on an extra burst of speed, she changed direction slightly to head towards the sparring spot she shared with Naruto and Sasuke. She'd been training there with them since she'd turned twelve, and knew its topography like the back of her hand. If she got there fast enough…

A shift in the air, the subtle pulse of energy that skated across her skin, had her moving before she could think. Right where she'd been only moments ago, three kunai thudded into wood. Only by shoving a pulse of chakra through her legs did she manage not to fall, instead pushing off the tree branch to hit the ground in a controlled skid. She slid to a stop at the other end of the clearing.

Like a ghost Itachi appeared, casually standing with arms crossed, on the same branch she had so recently vacated.

Even in the twilit gloom she could see him glance around the training ground with sharp, crimson eyes. It didn't surprise her; Itachi had probably come here only very infrequently, if at all, and without any real plan in this spar against the skilled ANBU captain she was glad for a moment to think.

But she didn't get the chance for, as soon as Itachi finished a cursory scan of the grounds, probably negating any advantages choosing the battleground had given her with a single glance, his chin tilted in a marginal nod.

"A large, open area with few trees to get in the way of your chakra-enhanced strikes, someplace you've fought many times before and will be less likely to be tricked into a genjutsu at." Those deep, crimson eyes warmed, making heat flash through her for a second. "Good."

Sakura barely managed not to let her shock show. Itachi was considerate when he was teaching her, he hadn't shown anger towards her since the day he'd caught her practicing Puppetry without a partner, but he was sparing with his praise.

She blinked in surprise, and stifled a gasp.

Itachi was gone.

She whirled around, chakra scalpels slicing at chest height, only to discover that Itachi was making a dragon-tail sweep to trip her. Tuck-diving into a roll that would put more distance between the two of them, she shot back away from him.

"No lowering your guard," his low baritone slid through the air as he followed his dragon-tail kick with a barrage of kunai. "And keep going."

With a curt nod, Sakura threw herself into the battle.

…

She was good. There was no denying it; in spite of the fact that she seemed to have some self-confidence issues, she was an analytical thinker when put on the spot, levelheaded.

Unlike Naruto, and even occasionally Sasuke, she didn't throw herself into a battle without a thought. Her moves from the moment she had bolted out of their practice clearing had been well planned and tactical. A trait that would prove to be invaluable if she wanted to attain ANBU rank.

Strength and skill were all good in their own ways, but due to the nature of ANBU missions, each member of a squad had to act as his or her own commander at times. Blindly following orders or rushing into things without thinking wasn't something that was looked well upon in ANBU; tactical thinking was, which explained Shikamaru's current position on Squad 17.

He knew she _could_ be hotheaded, had heard of incidents of her famous temper from both his younger brother and Naruto, and the rumors from the hospital, but she didn't appear to display that particular quality now as she fought him. She may have needed more training in speed and stamina, but she was a smart and creative fighter. She'd already tried to use the puppet technique against him, using a web of chakra attached to the shuriken he had given her in an attempt to cast a more effective genjutsu on him mid-battle.

Had it not been for the sharingan, her plan would have been a very effective one for capturing an enemy shinobi in a genjutsu without needing a focal point to pull them into the illusion.

A good few hours after sundown, they were still sparring, though it was getting more and more difficult to utilize the benefits of the sharingan without decent lighting. He had the advantage now that he had managed to draw her back into the trees, and it was obvious Sakura was flagging.

She was fighting well, but he had managed to force her into using up most of her chakra, and it was showing. Her response time had gotten slower and slower, and she had made a few key mistakes. One of which happened to be accidentally informing him that she was glad they weren't tearing up their practice clearing.

Considering the number of decimated trees and three foot deep craters that now decorated Team 7's usual training ground, Itachi had to admit that her concerns had been well-founded.

Regardless, it looked as if she was nowhere near giving up in spite of her fatigue. That was something the ANBU trainer assigned to her would have to teach her: limits, generally hers. But he knew exactly how to get her off guard enough to immobilize the roseate-haired sixteen-year-old before she ran herself into the ground trying to prove to him, and herself, that she was strong. She'd told him what was more important to her than this spar.

"You've been doing well, Sakura," he said into the gloom, knowing that she could hear him. "But you are tiring out. Stamina issues; we will work on that. Perhaps you just need the proper…motivation."

The tiny katon jutsu lit the night like a floodlight, blinding Sakura momentarily. But she managed to catch a glimpse of the direction he was heading in through eyes narrowed against the bright flare of the fire-based jutsu, and her gut plummeted with fear.

He was headed for their practice clearing, and that katon hadn't just been a blinding tactic.

She flung herself after him, strategies and such flying out of her head as she chased him. Even the small voice in the back of her head saying that Itachi must be using this as some sort of test was silenced in the face of her rising alarm.

Ahead of her, Itachi let a smile flit across his features. She was following him, and losing her focus; exactly as he'd planned.

He was at the clearing, slowing just enough so that she had a chance to catch up to him, before whirling around to catch the punch headed for the small of his back. He hadn't planned for her hit to be enhanced with chakra though; the strength behind it sent them both flying off the branch where he'd been standing.

He twisted so that they landed relatively softly on the grass.

Sakura lay beside him, quivering as she sucked in deep breaths with his hands wrapped around her wrists to keep her in place. But she wasn't struggling, too tired to do more than just lie there and try to catch her breath. Reluctantly, he let her go, sitting up to get a better glimpse of her in the moonlight.

Pure, jade eyes flickered open to focus on his face, a weak smile curving her lips. "That was…fun."

It was the adrenaline in her talking, making her silly and lightheaded, but Itachi couldn't help smiling back at her statement. He had enjoyed himself too; sparring with Sakura was something he had always wanted to do, but never allowed himself the leisure or opportunity. He had been taking advantage of her need for confidence and he knew it, but the spar had been useful.

Sakura was an able shinobi who would do well under ANBU training, she would no doubt achieve the rank in due time, and she would be safe.

Itachi had no false optimism that someone wouldn't discover his regard for the rose-haired girl. The likelihood that an enemy shinobi might come across the information was high considering his position as the Uchiha clan heir, but Sakura's status as an ANBU operative would keep her relatively safer, and the training would do the rest. He wasn't always going to be able to be there for her, but as an ANBU member, she would be much harder to defeat.

It would be difficult, knowing that for the next year she would be completely under the charge of an ANBU trainer with no time to call her own as she prepared for the grueling examinations, but the time spent apart would pay off in the end. She would be an ANBU operative, and she'd be safe.

She was still a bit out of breath when she finally sat up, leaning back on her hands as she glanced at him from under long lashes with some semblance of nonchalance. But the expectant, almost nervous look on her face that couldn't quite be hidden spoke volumes.

"Take the ANBU examinations."

Those large, limpid eyes of hers gleamed in the moonlight as they widened, her lips parting with surprise. She seemed as though she wanted to say something, but couldn't quite believe his quiet statement to express herself.

"It will be a year of training and testing to become ANBU, but," his eyes warmed just a fraction, barely visible in the night, "you are ready."

He reached out then, sliding his hand through the sweaty locks of her rosy-hued hair as he tucked it back behind her ear, and his hand lingered just a little longer than necessary. His fingertips brushed across her flushed cheek, drawing her eyes to his, and for a split second he felt overwhelmed by her beauty. Her eyes fluttered for a moment, and the temptation to lean forward and just…kiss her…. His feelings were so close to the surface that even a word would let her know how he felt.

And he couldn't do that just yet. She had a year of ANBU training to go through, and an exhausting exam to master. As much as he wanted to tell her, he couldn't afford to distract her. Not even like this.

So he merely smiled, a flicker of expression crossing his face before he let his fingers graze her cheek to chin before falling away.

"Thank you, Itachi," she murmured, and the color in her cheeks wasn't just from exertion. "I'll try my best to become a great ANBU operative."

He shook his head, leaning back to let the chilly night air envelop his black-clad body. "You won't need to try, Sakura," he replied softly, relishing her blush as he used her given name; they had gotten on first name basis sometime during her puppet-technique training and he loved being able to use it, as he had always wanted to. "You are well on your way."

_tsuzuku

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_Is anyone else really excited? This means I'm DONE writing With Practice! Admittedly, this isn't the last chapter (the last chapter is chapter seven and will be uploaded on Wednesday), but I'm done writing it! And I'm really happy with the way this chapter turned out ^^ Itachi totally took it in a direction I hadn't expected...like threatening to burn the practice clearing (which he says was a bluff and he would NEVER try to destroy) or trying to kiss Sakura (I didn't let him obviously, that would have screwed things up and he's still kinda sulky about it XD) but I really like his changes, so I hope you really like them too!

The seventh and final chapter of With Practice will be uploaded on Wednesday, and please check out the Itachi Birthday Poll on my profile page ^^

The muse says she's feeling good about herself cuz she's done with this fic and was driving me nuts until I finished it! Thank you so much everyone for being such great and supportive reviewers! You fed her and kept me going! This fic couldn't have been finished, or written in quite this way, without you guys!

Aria, out.


	7. Rationale

It's the very last chapter! It's finally done! As much as I loved writing this, there's a great sense of accomplishment in having finished it XD. Later I'm sure I'll go back and correct any little mistakes that are here that I'm too tired to correct now...but for now I hope everyone loved and enjoyed reading With Practice, and really, really enjoy this chapter! The muse says thanks for all the cookies and sweets, and I really loved all the reviews you guys sent me! This story would not have been as awesome without your guys' support!

Please, do enjoy!

Disclaimer: There is no owning of the Naruto here XD

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**Chapter 7: Rationale**

_Thunk._

Wood struck wood with just enough force that neither the heavy oaken shuriken nor the dead tree shattered. Sakura had made certain long ago, when she had first trained under Tsunade and turned one of her old cherry wood shuriken into matchsticks, how much chakra would be just enough to create maximum impact without damaging her precious shuriken.

A furious snarl rose to her throat as her empty hands curled into fists, Sakura resisting the urge to pound a crater into the dirt.

"Precious shuriken," she bit out angrily, growing even more incensed when her eyes suddenly blurred with unwanted tears. "That…that _bastard!_"

Finally succumbing to temptation, she whirled around, her fist burning with ice-blue chakra as it hurtled towards a tree-trunk like a comet portending the apocalypse—

A hair's breadth from the bark, Sakura froze.

At fist level were two, old blade marks. She knew exactly where those had come from. She could still hear the kunai and shuriken strikes from that day when she closed her eyes.

Biting her lip to swallow down a sob, Sakura wrapped her arm around the tree, and slid to her knees, pressing her forehead, once the source of much derision, against its rough bark.

Betrayal made pain blossom under her breastbone, the throb of hurt like a kunai thrust that hadn't healed.

Long minutes passed until the urge to cry abated and Sakura allowed herself the freedom to turn, sitting back against the tree as she sighed, tumultuous emotions fading to reluctant resignation.

Across the clearing, moonlight glinted off her tempered-steel shuriken, embedded in a tight circle below the hollowed-out place in the dead tree where she had placed Itachi's gift little more than seven years ago. Sakura used the moon's reflection off the burnished steel of one gauntlet to bounce light in scattered shards from the bladed weapons fixed into the deadwood tree-trunk.

Gauntlets.

With fingers that trembled only a little, Sakura touched the porcelain mask that lay atop her rose-pink locks. She could still remember the thrill of pride and victory she had felt when Yamato-taichou, her ANBU trainer, had appeared at the hospital during her shift with the mask in his hands. It had been the happiest birthday in her eighteen years.

But on the tail of that victory came a sharp stab of sorrow that she couldn't stave off. Her ability to dodge an enemy's strikes had no defenses when the hurt came from inside.

All members of ANBU were loosely affiliated with a squad that they took a large portion of their missions with, though individual members moved from squad to squad all the time. Tsunade had told her, more than once, that just because her regular assignment might not include Naruto or Sasuke, it did not mean she would never take missions with them. To hear it from Sai, Yamato-taichou, or Kakashi-sensei, she would be changing squads more often than her two teammates based on her talents as a medic-nin.

But she had still harbored the secret, _naïve_, desire to be placed as the primary medic on ANBU's elite squad: the one led by Uchiha Itachi.

One hand clenched into a weak fist, Sakura unable to muster any real anger at his decision just then; there was too much despondency in her for resentment.

He had refused her placement on his squad.

The age-old hurt and fear, that another perceived her as week, had choked her, the feeling made more prominent coming from _him._ The one who had been the first to truly see her as a future shinobi.

Itachi had given her six-year-old self her very first lesson in the shinobi arts, driving on Sakura's budding passion to become a powerful kunoichi though she came from no long-standing ninja clan. He had gifted her with practice shuriken and, later, a set crafted of beautiful, deadly steel. He had even been the cause of her childhood crush on Sasuke!

She could still remember the day her fellow teammate had flashed her a quick smile, and instead of feeling the thrill she had grown accustomed to experiencing when Sasuke gave her any attention, there was this sense of _wrongness_ because the expression had not been on the right brother's face. She'd felt like a bolt of lightning had rocked her world, realizing that three years' worth of infatuation had been because Sasuke reminded her of _Itachi_.

The feeling of betrayal, the realization that the older Uchiha saw her as weak, frail, _inadequate_, cut deep.

It might have helped if Itachi's refusal had been curt. She could have fumed and muttered about Uchiha arrogance, or snapped back an argument why, as one of the top ranking rookies of that year's examinations as well as Konoha General Hospital's most skilled medic, she stood a chance on his squad. Against a quiet aura of polite objection, she could muster no response.

So she had submitted to his decision with as much grace as she could manage. And when Yamato-taichou had approached her with a position on his squad, she had said yes.

She knew that it hadn't been a bad decision.

Yamato's team dealt primarily with rescue and retrieval missions, a mission type that appealed to her compassionate nature. And her earth-based techniques well complemented her squad captain's Wood Release, Neji's fluid Gentle Fist, and Uchiha Shisui's katon and Sharingan. She _fit_ in Squad 23.

The soft squeak of leather against wood broke her reverie, and Sakura shifted seamlessly from sitting with her back against the tree-trunk, to a defensive crouch with a kunai in her hand.

On the other side of the clearing stood Itachi, one of her practice shuriken in his hand.

The wrath she had thought controlled sprang free, the picture he made as he held the symbol of their friendship like salt on an open wound. It felt like a mockery of her feelings, so long kept secret.

With a snarl of anger, she lunged.

Itachi effortlessly ducked under the high kick she aimed at his head, but took the expected follow-up blow when the first hit transitioned flawlessly into a low, dragon-tail sweet, landing him on his back with Sakura on top of him as she straddled his waist. He refused to fight back. Her fist slammed into the ground by his cheek.

The snap of wood, another of her treasured practice shuriken, breaking under impact echoed sharply through the clearing.

Moonlight illuminated the tableau of the slim girl, barely a week into eighteen, straddling the prone male, her hands framing his face as they dug into the dirt on either side of his head. Her skin, his, their ANBU armor, and porcelain masks gleamed in the silvery shine, stark contrast to the night's darkness. And from the darkness of the skin-tight sleeveless that was regulation ANBU wear, gleamed familiar, inexpertly fashioned metal.

A necklace.

Through the fog of wrath clouding her thoughts, a single, _other_ emotion rose to the surface. Surprise.

He was wearing it; the necklace. Other than maybe Naruto, who wore the necklace given to him by Tsunade-shishou around his neck against the day he would become Rokudaime Hokage, Sakura could not think of another male willingly wearing one, such accessories deemed…emasculating.

But he wore it anyway, metal pieces resting gently against the contours of his clavicles.

Silence descended, long minutes of it as they stayed almost absolutely still, the only sound Sakura's breathing as she fought the sudden impulse of tears. Though they made her eyes gleam in the darkness, they didn't fall; and her throat quivered with the effort as she forced out the question she had been too afraid to ask earlier that day.

"Why."

'_Why didn't you take me? Why did you refuse? Why…wasn't I good enough?_'

All her questions, unvoiced but clear to Itachi in the glimmer of unshed tears in her eyes, tears she refused to let fall, echoed through her head in a sudden clamor.

"Hokage-sama asked me whether I had considered you for placement on Squad 15 the day you passed ANBU examinations."

Squad 15. Itachi's squad.

The semi non sequitur silenced the majority of the inner questions, her focus shifting to his explanation.

"She said that the only thing that might stop her from sanctioning the squad placement would be the mission types that Squad 15 takes."

Espionage. Assassination. They were either long or bloody, and always dangerous; more dangerous than the already perilous standards of ANBU missions.

"But she had no other objections. She told me that Squad 15 needed a medic."

Itachi's eyes revealed nothing as they met hers as he spoke.

"It does."

But he hadn't chosen her. He had told her, with manners he had probably learned in training to be the future clan leader of the Uchiha, that it was regrettable but he could not place her on his squad.

"Squad 15 takes on more high-risk missions than almost any other ANBU squad. It needs a medic on hand so that all members have the highest probability of returning to Konoha alive."

But he hadn't chosen her!

It was like hearing his refusal all over again, the pain that his words invoked just as sharp as it had been several hours ago.

"You told Tsunade-shishou no."

Her words weren't a question but a statement of fact. She knew that he must have told her former teacher that he would not take her on during that conversation, or he would not have denied her earlier today. Her tone held nothing more than defeat. She already knew there was no way to fight the final decision.

"I told her I would not," he confirmed.

'_Well that's that,_' Sakura thought bitterly, feeling the unshed tears drying from her eyes. '_He wasn't going accept me into Squad 15 from the start. Weakness, inexperience, whatever it was._'

"Why?" she wanted to know, the word coming easier now, though it had still hurt like hell to ask.

"Because I could not."

Sakura's eyes widened, then narrowed, the fury that had abated in the face of her sadness coming back in full force.

"_Bullshit!_" she snapped, drawing back a little as she glared down at him from her superior position. "Don't give me that crap, Uchiha. If it was because I was a rookie, then say so. If you think I'm weak, tell me to my face! Don't just say that you couldn't, because that's no reason to—,"

"ANBU regulation," Itachi interrupted, silencing her, "states that no two shinobi engaged in a relationship may be placed on the same squad in case a conflict of interests arises."

Drawing himself up onto an elbow, Sakura's eyes filling with mingled surprise and sudden promise, he fisted a gauntleted hand in hair that reminded him of cherry blossoms just blooming, and fiercely claimed her lips.

Her body gave a jolt of shock as he invaded her warm mouth, her mind struggling sluggishly to comprehend what was happening under the onslaught of pleasure as he dominated her, though it was she straddling him and not the other way around. She had no way of knowing that he kissed her through the growing thrum of an unfamiliar feeling, fear, as it tingled down his spine at her unresponsiveness. He tasted her, not knowing if this would be the first and last time he did, wanting to memorize the moment with every fiber of his being.

And then she relented, in sweetest submission as she responded to his touch, and there was no greater victory.

Her hands tangled in his hair, slim fingers dislodging the tie that kept the ebony strands bound. With a groan that was lost between their lips, Itachi dispensed with passive aggression, throwing an arm around her waist as he sat up to take better control of the kiss.

She was breathless when he pulled away.

"You know why I could not have you join Squad 15," he murmured against her lips. "With you there…" He would do everything within his power to protect her, choose her above all else, jeopardizing himself and the mission.

She understood. There would be other missions together.

For the first time that night, Sakura could feel herself smiling, lips curving against the corner of Itachi's mouth, his mimicking hers in reaction. She could feel the upward tilt of his lips against her cheek.

"I must admit to being jealous of my cousin," he told her softly, the words tickling as they brushed past her ear.

Sakura made a noise, like the tail end of a question, in the back of her throat. "Of Shisui?" she wanted to know. "Why?"

"Because of this, the top ranking medic in Konoha is on his squad instead of mine."

Her laughter was dazzling as she turned her face up for another kiss.

_owari

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And there you have it! The very end of With Practice! The lovely Itaweasel-hime made me a pretty fanart of what she felt the kiss looked like, and I hope to have it in my favorites on my dA before long! That being said, if anyone else feels like making a fan art of that particular scene, I'd love to see it! I really want to know if what you guys thought is the same as the scene in my head! Please vote on the Itachi Birthday Poll on my profile!

The muse feels smug because this is technically the second time I'm posting this, and she really likes that more people will get to see it XD (she made me write this in such a short time that she feels she has a right to be smug...)

Thanks for all your lovely reviews! The muse will use them as fuel for my next ItaSaku non-mass chapter fic for your consumption!

Aria, out.


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